“So many papers are extremely hard to read because the formulas are obfuscated like that”
This isn’t really an issue though, of you don’t have enough foundational knowledge to understand what the formula means or how it could be conceivably derived, does knowing how it’s calculated matter?
“From computer science papers/academic texts I know this method of reading works perfectly”
This is almost certainly due to pure familiarity. CS papers are just as indecipherable to unfamiliar persons. Possibly even more since things like complexity are heavily used, without any explanation of what it is. Data structures are another common one that the vast majority of non-CS people would not understand when referenced.
I know because this is exactly how I felt coming from an intermediate mathematics background.